


kiss me like you mean it

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrations, Internalized Acephobia, The Magnus Archives Hurt/Comfort Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:13:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26077774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: She deepens the kiss, pushes him back into the couch a bit, and slowly slides a hand up his shirt, tracing his warm skin. She feels him inhale sharply, drawing back a bit from her.She blinks, drawing back as well until she can look him in the eyes. His are open wide.“Everything okay?” she asks.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 44
Kudos: 362





	kiss me like you mean it

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for TMAHC week. 
> 
> Self-worth Issues ♢ Pretend ♢ Shaky hands

Georgie’s never really made the first move before. She used to be a much shyer person, so maybe that’s it. Doesn’t feel like it, though. Feels like it might be a bit of a Jon thing as well. 

She was the one who asked him out first as well, after all. He’d huff out a laugh whenever she made a dumb pun, instead of groaning like everyone else, which she liked. He’s the type of person that it’s fun and easy to make fun of things with. He’s _passionate_ about stuff, to the point of researching it for hours on end and then going on long winded rants about it if someone so much as gave it a passing mention. _And,_ he has a cute face and likes cats. He’s the full package, really. Of course she had to ask him out. 

… also, he was the first person to make that giddy, warm feeling swoop through the bottom of her belly since-- well, ever since she stopped feeling anything at all for a while. Everything had come back to her so slowly, so gradually, and she’d been starting to… not worry, exactly, but she’d started to accept in a resigned sort of way that _that_ particular feeling wouldn’t be coming back to her. She’d miss it. It had been fun. Yet another good thing lost to her. 

But then she met Jonathan Sims, and he had the most _adorable_ smile when she managed to get it out of him and he smelled so nice and once when she had to squeeze past him because they both ended up in the same tight space between two bookshelves in the library she could feel the warmth of his body as she edged past him and he looked up at her, just a couple inches shorter, and his breath had smelled like mint and his eyelashes were, just, absolutely gorgeous-- 

Something had _sparked,_ and a feeling that she’d thought she’d never be getting back was there all of a sudden. 

She flirted with him. She found excuses to hang out with him, invited him to things, asked him about himself and the stuff he was interested in. Hinted, showed that she was single, did everything she could to show that she was interested short of throwing herself at him and… nothing. Which would normally mean that no, he wasn’t interested, just give up, but… Jon was kind of oblivious to some stuff sometimes, right? She’d noticed that. She was pretty sure that he wasn’t rude, or not _just_ rude. Sometimes he really just didn’t notice. 

And she really, really wanted to feel that giddy, warm feeling in her stomach again, so for the first time in her life, she asked the guy out first. Pretty stupid in hindsight, that it took that much. She’s a feminist, she should’ve thought to do it earlier, just… she’d never done it before. 

But it went fine. He said _yes._ After a lot of stammering, but it was still a yes. She got to spend more time with him, and listen to his cute, soft laugh whenever she makes a dumb joke, and how passionate he gets about the most obscure, nerdy things, and the gentle face he makes when he manages to coax a cat into petting range. She likes Jon. She likes being around him. And she _really_ likes the way he makes her feel sometimes, when he’s fresh out of the shower and his shoulder length hair is clinging to his skin, or he’s wearing that shirt that shrunk a bit in the wash and now it's all tight and clingy. 

She’d asked him out first, and it’s slowly starting to dawn on her that she might have to be the one who makes the first move as well when it comes to, well, sex. 

She’s surprised by that, somehow. Every guy she’s ever been with, they’ve gone for it as soon as she’s given them a single inch. Jon, though. It’s been _months,_ and they haven’t moved past first base. She can kiss and kiss him until she feels breathless with it, and he’ll kiss back and smile at her and run his hands up and down her arms and back and then… it’ll just sort of peter off, without his hands drifting anywhere else. It’s sweet and sensual and she really does think he’s enjoying himself, but it never goes any further than that. 

Clearly, Jon just… doesn’t take the initiative, when it comes to stuff like this. She wouldn’t call him shy, but she is noticing a sort of trend with him. He doesn’t reach out first. If no one ever noticed him on their own, he’d probably just be alone for a long, long time. He doesn’t ask if he can come to that party, and he doesn’t throw them himself. He hasn’t signed up to be in any clubs or study groups, and he doesn’t really talk to people unless they talk to him first, or he has an explicit reason to talk to them. 

So. If Georgie wants to feel warm and giddy, if she wants to touch Jon more, for him to touch her-- which she _does--_ she’s going to have to make the first move herself. That’s fine. She doesn’t get nervous any longer, after all. All she has to do is ask. He’d said yes when she asked him out, after all. It’ll be okay. 

He’ll say yes. 

They’re kissing on the couch again, intimate and almost lazy with how they’re just lingering in it, in each other. It feels kind of good, honestly, to have a boyfriend who doesn’t go for her tits at the first opportunity. She doesn’t have to hide rolling her eyes at him in the middle of things. It feels like he likes _her._

That just makes her want to push things further along though, how much she likes him. 

She deepens the kiss, pushes him back into the couch a bit, and slowly slides a hand up his shirt, tracing his warm skin. She feels him inhale sharply, drawing back a bit from her. 

She blinks, drawing back as well until she can look him in the eyes. His are open wide. 

“Everything okay?” she asks. She’d been sort of hoping that she could just… take him by the hand and lead him to the next step without them having to talk about it, make it feel organic. Maybe that was the wrong move though? Just talking things out is usually the right thing to do. 

“Ye-- yes, I’m fine, I’m okay,” he says, so quickly that the words sort of stumble over each other. “You just-- I was just startled.” 

“Sorry,” she says, and gives him a wry grin. “Guess I should’ve given you a warning, huh?” 

He huffs out a little laugh, half self deprecating, half nervous. 

She slides her hand down his side, until she can slide it a bit underneath his trousers, his pants, just enough so that she can rub a soothing little circle into his hip bone with her thumb. Jon makes an adorable little squeaking noise that he tries to bite back. 

“Warning: I’m going to touch your dick. Okay?” she says, a playful smile on her face. She doesn’t want to put too much pressure on this, just because this will be their first time together, just because this is the longest she’s ever been in a relationship before she reached this stage, just because this is the first time she’ll be having sex since she… 

No, don’t think about that. If she puts pressure on this, she won’t be able to enjoy it. She wants to keep it light, breezy, _fun._ That’s what she likes about Jon. That she can have fun with him. 

“... Okay,” Jon says after a long moment of just silently looking up at her. He still looks wide eyed. 

Georgie wonders if this is his first time or something. 

… Oh, she can really see that being the case. She makes a snap decision, and just kisses him again instead of asking him about it. If he wanted for her to know, he would’ve brought it up. Meaning, if she brings it up first, he’ll either panic and badly lie about it, or he’ll just be upset that she was apparently able to guess it. So, if there are no good outcomes, why ruin the good mood? It’s fine. Everyone has sex for the first time once. If she’s Jon’s first, then that’s fine. They can still have a good time. 

Jon kisses her back after a belated moment. His hands hover over her indecisively, as if not sure where they should land, before they finally tentatively, lightly land on her hips. Where before he’d been loose, pliable, almost melting into her, he’s stiff and tense now. She keeps her hand where it is on his hip. She’ll kiss him until he’s soft and comfortable again before she moves further. 

It takes longer than she thought it would, but he does, eventually, the nerves sliding back out of him as he sinks back into the kiss, the present moment. That’s the key to good sex: not overthinking it. She remembers vaguely being deeply nervous about her first time, the same way she remembers all of her memories that are tinged with fear in any way. Distantly, as if it’s something she saw in a movie rather than something that actually happened to her. She gets it, though. She won’t go too fast for him. There’s no rush. 

Drawing back from the kiss, she shrugs her shirt off in one movement, tossing it onto the floor. 

“Oh!” Jon says, as if this is an incredibly startling turn of events. He almost looks panicked, like he’s accidentally walked in on her changing. She smiles at him reassuringly, and unclasps her bra as well. Her tits _do_ look nice. She’d heard that she might grow some from just the estrogen shots, but she’s really pleased that they got so big. She’s got _cleavage._ With the right bra, anyways. 

“D’you wanna take your shirt off too?” she asks him, voice low. 

After a moment, he nods. His hands go to the hem of his shirt. They don’t move. 

She frowns. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Jon.” 

Is Jon body shy? Has she ever seen him with his shirt off, now that she’s thinking about it? She can’t clearly remember a moment like that, even though they’ve been living together for a while now. He’s always fully dressed in a new change of clothes whenever he exits the bathroom, fresh from a shower. Should she have done this later in the day, when they could just turn the lights off and fumble around in the dark? Would that help Jon feel less nervous about everything? 

“I want to,” he says forcefully, and he takes his shirt off. 

He doesn’t have any noticeable scars, or anything that she can see that he might feel self conscious about. Body image issues are rarely that simple, though. People can feel bad about themselves without any tangible reason for it. She leans down to kiss his throat, his collarbone, sliding one appreciative hand up his side. 

“You look nice,” she tells him. Guys should get compliments in bed, too. 

“Th-- thanks,” he says, his arms coming around her. He clutches at her tightly. “You too.” 

She kisses the side of his face, and then tugs a bit at the hem of his trousers. “Do you want to…?” she says. 

He holds her tighter. She can’t see his face, but she feels him nod. She can hear his heartbeat, pressed up against him like this. It’s fast. Excitement? 

She draws back, and he lets go of her slowly, like he doesn’t want to, like he wants to keep holding her. She smiles at him, reassuring. He smiles back. It looks… wobbly. 

The feeling that she’s _missing_ something that’s been lingering in the back of her head for the last few minutes grows, to the point that she can’t help but notice it now. 

She puts a hand to his face. “Jon?” 

“I, yes?” he says, sounding breathless. They haven’t done much more than kissing, though. He looks strained at the edges, like he’s stressed and trying to hide it. That’s not like him. Jon’s always so open about his feelings, his frustration. Not communicating them, exactly, but he’s easy to read. 

“Are you okay?” 

The smile he’s wearing that doesn’t even remotely reach his eyes crumbles a bit at the edges at that. “Of course I’m okay,” he says, in a way that tells her that he’s very much _not_ okay. 

Okay, she sort of wishes that she hadn’t tossed her shirt onto the floor now. She wants to put it back on, but she wants to draw back from Jon to look for it even less. He’s looking fragile, all of a sudden. 

His hands move to unbutton his trousers, and that’s when she notices that he’s _shaking,_ his fingers fumbling as he tries to push the button through the hole. 

This is one of those moments when a pang of alarm should shoot through her, but instead there’s just nothing. She even waits for it, _still_ not used to the absence. 

She reaches out and takes his hands in hers, stopping him. 

“Hey,” she says, “tell me what’s wrong.” 

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says, the expression on his face crumpling even further, to the point that the lie is just ridiculous at this point. 

“Uh huh,” she says with as much skepticism as she can inject into her voice, which is quite a lot. She rubs a thumb across the back of his hand, like she can smooth out the tremble in his fingers. 

“Really,” he says unconvincingly. 

“Jon, if you’re not in the mood--”

 _“No,”_ he interrupts her, sounding surprisingly intense about it. “Of course I’m-- of course I’m in the mood! You’re beautiful, we’ve been kissing for so long, _dating_ for so long, and I like you so much-- of course I want to, I’m a man why-- why _wouldn't_ I--” 

She blinks, startled at the outburst. Words are spilling out of him like they’ve been boiling inside of him since they started kissing. Or since she put her hand up his shirt, maybe. 

She puts a hand over his mouth, and he stammers to a halt. 

“Rambling,” she says, not unkindly. She takes her hand away after giving him a moment, and Jon just breathes for a bit, swallowing. 

“S-- sorry,” he says. “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” she decides. Who is she to judge someone for some anxiety, considering who she used to be? Who is she to judge someone for some sexual hangups, considering who she is now? She probably should’ve talked to him about this, shouldn’t she. Instead of springing it on him. “There’s no hurry, Jon.” 

His expression tightens again at that, his shoulders rising to his ears, where before he’d just looked a bit like a miserable ragdoll, slumped and shame faced. 

“Georgie,” he says. 

“No, really,” she hurries to cut him off before he can get back to _whatever_ that rant had been about. “It’s not like there’s a deadline to reach. We don’t have to do anything before you feel ready for it.” 

Jon takes a shuddering breath, like she just gut punched him. 

“What if I don’t ever feel ready?” he asks hoarsely. 

And then he’s crying. 

She just stares for a long moment. She’s never seen Jon cry before. Upset, sure, but never crying. He snatches his hands out of hers to try and wipe his tears away, to hide his face, but more tears come to replace them as soon as he does. That snaps her out of it. 

“Jon, hey, shh,” she says, because he’s clearly not ready for a conversation right now. He’s a trembling wreck. She puts her arms around him, pulls him close. “Shh, it’s okay.” 

“I’m _normal,”_ he says raggedly, like she’s accused him of being anything else. “I’m f-- fine, I _want_ to, I do, I--” 

She kisses the top of his head, tucking his face into the crook of her neck. She rubs her hand up and down his back. He’s done something like this for her before. Made her eat when she’s felt too numb to see any point in getting up and making food. Talked at her, even if it was sometimes in a nervous, worried ramble or a long lecture about his latest interesting fixation, until she finally saw a point in responding. They take care of each other. 

Jon devolves into hitched breaths and choked out words muffled against her skin, mostly ‘normal’ and ‘fine’ and ‘sorry’. She feels wetness on her skin, where his eyes are pressed up against her. She gently cards her fingers through his hair until he finally trails off into silence, his tense shoulders eventually going slack, exhausted. 

When he’s done, she gets off the couch. He makes an almost unheard, bereft noise. She picks up her shirt, puts it on. Finds Jon’s shirt as well and takes it with her back to the couch. She hands it to him, sitting close enough that their thighs are touching, and she takes his hand. He can’t really put his shirt on like that, but she’ll let go if he makes a move to do it. He looks almost numbly down at where she’s holding his hand, like he’s surprised by it. His eyes still look wet, glistening, the skin around them looking raw with shed tears. 

“Just thought we should put our clothes back on,” she says, “since I feel like sex is pretty much off the table for now. Or always?” 

He flinches at the question, like it’s some sort of accusation. 

“I…” he says quietly, still not looking up at her, shame faced. “I’m-- I’m so sorry about that outburst, Georgie. You didn’t deserve that, I just. Lost control. That’s no excuse--” 

She squeezes his hand once, and that’s apparently all it takes for him to cut himself off. Ready for her to tell him to shut up, apparently. 

“You don’t need to say sorry,” she says firmly. “I’m not mad. Just… confused. And worried.” Worried might not be quite the right word, any longer. That implies some form of anxiety. But she _cares._ “You didn’t want to have sex at all, did you? Why did you pretend, Jon?” 

He clutches back at her hand tightly. He looks stressed, upset, scared. None of the things she’d wanted to make happen. She hadn’t done anything _weird,_ she doesn’t think. She hadn’t been rough with him. So this has to be coming from him, in some way. His own baggage. She just wants to know what it is, so she can help him calm down. So she can avoid making it happen again. 

“I want to be-- I want to be worth you, Georgie,” he says. 

She blinks at that. That hadn’t been what she’d been expecting. Not at all. 

“You’re wonderful. I want to be a good partner to you. And a good partner can-- a _normal_ partner can-- I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He takes a deep, bracing breath. He finally seems to find the courage to dart at least a quick glance up towards her face. He makes himself smile, and it looks almost pained with how forced it is. Like it could collapse at any moment like a house of cards and show something quite different. “I thought it’d be different with… if it was just someone I loved then maybe… I don’t know. It’s just-- I just-- it doesn’t _feel_ the way it-- it’s supposed to feel, clearly. It just makes me… panic. I’m sorry.” 

“Jon,” she says slowly, trying to process all of that. “That’s all _bullshit.”_

That makes him properly look at her. Wide eyed and a little bit gobsmacked, like she’s said the one thing that he hadn’t prepared himself for. 

“I don’t want to scare you,” she says, because that’s the one clear memory of fear that she has left. The utter terror of the realization that almost killed her. She doesn’t ever want to scare Jon. “I don’t want for you to force yourself to do something that you don’t want, just because you think it’ll make me happy.” 

“You didn’t scare me,” he says. “I’m not scared of you, that’s not what I meant, I--” He stops, inhales. “I just mean that… there’s something I’m lacking, or-- something that I’m _missing,_ that I don’t understand that everyone else does. I don’t know how to enjoy… it. Sex.” 

“Okay,” she says. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I-- I really tried. I just need to find a way to--” 

“No,” she says, and an almost panicked expression slides over his face. 

“I can,” he says urgently. “I _can,_ Georgie, I want to--” 

She puts her hand over his mouth again. He doesn’t try to dodge it or pull it away. It’s a bit of habit that they’re building up, partially an inside joke. That, and it’s just effective. 

“I mean, if you don’t want to have sex, then that’s fine. It’s not that big of a deal, Jon.” She’s spent over a year with her libido as dead as a rock. She’d missed it, but it had been far from the most important thing on the list. She doesn’t know if that’s the situation Jon is in, but she knows something about not feeling the way she’s supposed to, now. Poking and prodding, trying to push herself before she felt ready, all that had accomplished was pushing herself to tears with a vibrator in her hand. “If you ever change your mind, then that's fine, I’m game. But if you don’t? If it’s always something that just upsets you? Then that’s okay too.” 

She takes her hand away from his mouth. He opens his mouth, closes it. He looks stunned. Lost for words. Looking at her like she’s… 

Like she’s something, is all she can guess. He looks overwhelmed, at least. 

“You’re already worth me, you… absolute doofus,” she says, deciding to break the silence herself. She puts a fond hand to his face, rubbing a thumb along the ridge of his cheekbone. “You make me happy. I like spending time with you. I don’t need more than that. Trust me, I’ve got toys. I can take care of myself.” 

He giggles a bit at that, quiet and almost incredulous. 

“Thank you, Georgie,” he finally says, which is at least much better than ‘I’m sorry’. An improvement. He smiles, and it looks real, if tired and tear stained. “I’ve never had someone like you before.” 

“I’ve never had someone like you before either,” she says, because it’s true. He’s been a pretty damned novel boyfriend so far, and she doesn’t even mean the ‘sex is upsetting’ thing. Although that’s pretty new too. 

He huffs another gentle laugh, almost more air than noise, and she decides that it’s time to lighten the mood. 

“Question,” she says, “can I _think_ about you while I’m taking care of myself? Because _damn_ I’ve got good taste.” 

He chokes on his own spit, and she smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> The illustration was done by [occhiolysm!](https://occhiolysm-art.tumblr.com/) Check their stuff out!


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